The McCarry’s Oak Framed Barn Style House

Gail and Mike McCarry wanted to build a barn style oak frame home on a disused farm in a conservation area in Swansea ‘We’ve always loved wood but a barn in oak seemed like a pipe dream,’ says Gail. ‘Then when we went to visit Welsh Oak Frame and looked around owner, Paul Edmund’s oak frame home. We became hooked on the frame’s beauty and speed of construction.

Gail and Mike needed a barn design for their planning application that would meet the council’s stringent requirements. The council were keen for the new development to retain the farm’s character, reflect the original buildings and respect the conservation area. ‘There were pages of conditions to meet, mostly to do with surveying the landscape – bats, badgers, trees. Otherwise, the barn had to be one-and-a-half storeys, wood frame windows, stone cladding and built largely on the footprint of the old cowshed.’

‘Welsh Oak Frame were incredibly helpful and gave us a standard barn-style plan from their portfolio to use in our submission,’ says Gail. ‘The one-and-half-storey, long and narrow shape fitted the council’s criteria’. ‘The design team made our budget work, giving us a double height central oak frame with the side structures in softwood. We’ve got much more oak that we expected.’

‘Welsh Oak were great and supported us through may of the planning meetings we had’ says Gail.

The barn frame is wrapped in SIPs, clad in stone and larch and features a double height living space in the middle of the house to allow natural light to flood in to the upstairs area. The property is so impressive it won a LABC Building Excellence award.

‘We love the warmth of the wood; we love living here’ says Gail.

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